Cairde is collaborating with School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin to explore the mental health experiences of African migrants in Ireland.

We are inviting mental health professionals of African origin to participate in this discussion “Exploring the mental health care experiences of African migrants” in order to know your specific perspectives with regards to how African migrants in Ireland view mental health issues and what’s their experience of using Irish mental health services.

Monday 28th of July (time TBC-please indicate if you prefer office or out-of-office hours)

Cairde, 19 Belvedere Place, Dublin 1 (we reimburse travel expenses)

Themes to be explored

Cultural understanding of mental health

Most prevalent mental health issues of African migrants

Experience of accessing and using mental health services, including pathways of access.

Learning from this discussion will be used by collaborating partners to issue a document/s describing your experience and listing your recommendations. By doing so we aim to inform the work of everyone who deals with ethnic communities around mental health. It will inform planning action of Cairde’s Mental Health Initiative, relevant services and policy makers. Furthermore a conference is planned for 2015 to present these findings and give a voice to the community. Findings are also part of PHD research of Rebecca Murphy.

More information: MentalHealth@cairde.ie

Cairde is a community development organisation working to tackle health inequalities among ethnic minority communities by improving ethnic minority access to health services, and ethnic minority participation in health planning and delivery.

Be Aware. Be Well. Migrant Mental Health Initiative is a new Cairde’s programme aiming to improve mental health outcomes of ethnic minorities in Irelandfocusing on access to mental health services, community based mental health promotion and mental health policy. Its predevelopment phase will specifically concentrate on improving knowledge base on migrants mental health in Ireland, empowering migrant communities to identify and address own needs, as well as on creating awareness among other stakeholders. More Cairde.ie/MentalHealth

Research ‘Exploring the mental health care experiences of African forced migrants’ is being carried out by Rebecca Murphy who is a PhD Student at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin.